U.S. Offers Georgia “Immediate Response”

This weekend Georgian media announced the commencement of a two week American-Georgian military exercise training code-named “Immediate Response,” which will take place at a base near Tbilisi. However, in a conversation with an anonymous source known as “B,” a representative of the U.S. embassy in Georgia denied the presence of these military exercises. As it turned out, the journalists, using government officials as their source, described it as military training; but in fact the training course, taught by American instructors, will only prepare the Georgian soldiers deployed to Afghanistan.

“Immediate Response” training in Georgia first began in August of 2008. However, at the start of the Georgian-Russian conflict over South Ossetia, about a thousand American military personnel were rapidly evacuated out of the country. Americans left so fast they left several of their military Hummers behind, which the Russian army seized as its trophies after occupying the city of Poti.

The new joint “training” has been causing a lot of tension in Georgia. The U.S. embassy in Tbilisi announced that there aren’t any American-Georgian military training operations going on at this time. The discussion is about the training course taught to Georgian soldiers by American instructors at the training center Krtsanisi. “As it is well known, there are in fact a small number of American military instructors in Georgia who are teaching the Georgian military the methods of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Calling this Georgian-American military relation a training exercise would be a big stretch”, Irakli Aladashvili, editor-in-chief of the military magazine “Arsenali,” told “B”.

This is happening with the agenda of preparing Georgian military personnel who are sent to Afghanistan for a peace keeping mission under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In the beginning of August, the Georgian parliament confirmed President Mikheil Saakashvili’s initiative to contribute its infantry forces to the mission. According to the Georgian Minister of Defense, the infantry battalion will be deployed under American forces and the infantry company will be under French command. The first group is set to be deployed to Afghanistan this fall and the next in the spring of 2010.

In September, a group of U.S. Marine instructors launched an intensive six month course with the 31st infantry battalion of the Georgian army. The video footage of the Krtsanisi base played on the Georgian channels didn’t show any American soldiers — they do not participate in these trainings. After “B” made inquiries, the press center for the Georgian Ministy of Defense admitted yesterday that this is just a training course and not an overall military training.

Evidently, these exercises, in the minds of the Georgian authorities, were supposed to demonstrate the strong friendship between Tbilisi and Washington. For that reason, the Georgian officials decided to slightly raise the status of a “training course” to “joint military cooperation.” However, some experts believe that the present U.S. administration is being careful about having any large scale military cooperation with Georgia, so as to not irritate Moscow. So, instead of the thousand American military personnel that were present in Georgia in August of 2008, today the U.S. military presence in the country is reduced to small number, a group of no more than ten military instructors.

In that regard, the former Georgian Minister of Defense David Sikharulidze, in his interview with American media, carelessly declared that the anti-terrorist skills taught by the professionals from the U.S. will be useful to the Georgian army in their war with Russia. When Washington showed discontent with this formulation, Mr. Sikharulidze had to recant his own statement, and soon he was dismissed from his post.